


(But It's Like...) Cranes, In the Sky

by isaac richard (isaacrichard)



Series: It’s No Big Surprise (You Turned Out This Way) [3]
Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Introspection, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Nonbinary Character, Other, Recreational Drug Use, Trans Character, hes confused but hes got shayla and darlene so its ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isaacrichard/pseuds/isaac%20richard
Summary: Darlene buys Elliot a skirt. Elliot tries not to freak out.
Relationships: Darlene Alderson & Elliot Alderson, Elliot Alderson & Shayla Nico
Series: It’s No Big Surprise (You Turned Out This Way) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788682
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	(But It's Like...) Cranes, In the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> piggybacks right off of "i'm free".  
> title (and lyrics): cranes in the sky by solange 
> 
> thanks for reading :)

_"I tried to drink it away_

_I tried to put one in the air_

_I tried to dance it away_

_I tried to change it with my hair_

_But it's like_

_Cranes in the sky_

_Sometimes I don't wanna feel_

_Those metal clouds"_

He’s wearing stockings.

Stockings, and a flowing, off-white skirt that billows around the tops of his ankles. He stands on tiptoes in his tiny bathroom, craning his neck in the mirror to glare at his newly feminine reflection. There’s an uncomfortably anxious skip to his heartbeat – and his ass doesn’t look so flat anymore, but he’s too busy trying not to flip out to notice such a thing.

When Darlene said she had gotten him something, this had been the very last thing on his mind. But obviously, Dom had spilled to her, and Darlene, as usual, had promptly decided to press the issue as hard as she possibly could.

His phone vibrates across the sink, making his jump. His skirt swishes gently, and the breeze that follows is the oddest sensation of his life. It occurs to him that boxers don’t exactly go with the garment, but he didn’t have anything else, and he can’t even _think_ about panties without getting flustered and embarrassed.

“Hello?”

“Did you open it yet?” Darlene’s voice is tinny, like she might be on the train.

He sighs, resuming his reflection glaring. He does a little half-turn in the mirror, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear. “I’m wearing it.”

She squeals. “Yay! Don’t you love it?”

That was the problem: he did. It was very pretty, very soft and detailed with intricate, cascading ruffles near the bottom. He liked it a lot.

Elliot’s relationship with clothes, until this point, had been nonexistent. If they covered his body and made him decent to the world, that was all he needed them to do, no bells or whistles required. He had zero sense of personal fashion – but he had also been closely observing the ways girls dressed for his entire life.

It was hard not to, when Angela would ask him for dress advice, or Darlene would show off her new furry coat, beaming like she’d won the thrift-store lottery. When Shayla would shyly ask him which delicately laced bra he preferred. He had formed opinions on women’s clothing against his will, and he knows that this is a nice skirt by anyone’s standards.

It was new, not thrifted, and not something Darlene would wear herself. She bought it just for him, and she was as intuitive about his clothing as he was about hers. It fits his frame – God only knew how she guessed his size so correctly – and he looks _good._

He looks good, but he doesn’t know what to do with it.

What now? Does he secretly wear skirts around the apartment for the rest of his life?

Or does he finally say fuck it, and take the plunge he’s been carefully avoiding for twenty years?

He glances down at his stockings. Those definitely help the illusion – if he could even call it that. It all felt much too real for such a word, but at least with them, he can ignore the hair on his brunt, masculine legs. With them, everything fits a little bit better.

“Elliot?”

He startles, and the phone slips from his shoulder, clatters to the floor. He scoops it up. “Yeah – sorry.”

“You zoned out.”

“I know.”

“Do you like it?”

Elliot worries his lip. Does he lie and hurt her feelings, or does he tell the truth and hurt his own?

“I – I,” he falters. “I don’t know.”

He can hear the look Darlene is giving him. “Yes, you do. Do you like it or not?”

He sighs. He hates that he can’t walk away from the subject, with Darlene. She just didn’t take no for an answer. “Yes. I like it. Happy?”

“Very happy,” she says, satisfied, and hangs up on him. He knows he’ll probably see her tonight, but it still pisses him off.

Or, it’s not her that pisses him off, he realizes, tossing his phone to the bed. He’s barefoot, besides the stockings, and it’s a strange feeling to walk across the floor. It’s like wearing socks, but thinner, tickling the underside his toes. He rubs one foot over the other, trying to chase the sensation away.

It’s _this._ It’s how hard this is, how his feelings are a muddled mush of boy-girl, man-woman, and nothing. He thinks that he should have done nothing when these feelings resurfaced. He should have ignored them, let them ebb away like they had before.

But he wasn’t stupid. They’d come back again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Endless loop, endless cycle, and he was stuck in the middle – unless he decided to break free of it all.

He rubs at his temples, unable to do this sober. His dilemma is: that in order to get to Shayla and therefore no longer be sober, he should probably take off the skirt.

He doesn’t want to. And he decides, abruptly, that he’s not going to. He skitters from the apartment before he can change his mind or lose his nerve.

“Hey, man. Nice skirt,” Shayla says as she cracks open the door, and though he tenses, it comes across as genuine. Her hair is a mess, and though it was nearly three in the afternoon, she had clearly been sound asleep. “Darlene’s doing?”

“You got any weed?” he blurts, nervously reaching to tug at the hem of his skirt, much like he would a hoodie sleeve.

Shayla nods, rubs her eyes, and opens the door for him. She smooths back her hair. “I always got bud for my bud.”

He’s three joints in when he starts crying, weeping so hard he has to set the third in Shayla’s ashtray, lest he drop it. The thought of ash accidentally staining his white skirt makes him cry that much harder.

“Oh!” Shayla says, when she turns. Elliot didn’t sob audibly, or make a lot of noise at all, and it frightened her to have no warning. She holds him anyway, soft and awkward and stoned, though they’ve long since broken up.

He lets her. He holds on tight.

“I’m defective,” he whispers, too quiet to be joking, and unable to stop the tears that continue to fall. Shayla holds him, holds him, holds him. She holds him stronger than Earth’s pull did, anchoring him to the real world. He sniffles.

“Is this ‘cause of the skirt?” she asks softly, slurring slightly. The look on her face is softly inebriated, and very concerned. “’S no biggie, Elliot. Skirts are pretty on girls and boys.”

He hiccups. “What if you’re neither?”

Shayla blinks. “That’s not a biggie, either. You take it all so seriously, Elliot – but I promise you, nobody cares. They’re too wrapped up in their own lives –“ she waves a hand, as if gesturing to the rest of humanity. “to honestly give a shit. Do what you want, Elliot. Be free.”

He falls asleep to that thought, limbs heavy from the weed, and they nap together on Shayla’s couch. When he wakes, evening is falling, and Darlene was sitting across from them, reading a magazine. She must have jimmied Shayla’s lock.

“Hey,” she smiles. “You look good.”

He did. And, just maybe, that was enough.


End file.
